Working as an Advisor in All Fifty States

Three businesses, three different Mondays

Picture a marina on a tidal river. The owner has slips, a fuel dock, a service yard, and a lease with the state on part of the waterfront. Now picture a farm supply dealer in the middle of the country. Seed, feed, fertilizer, a few trucks, and customers who have bought from the same counter for three generations. Then a medical practice in a small town, where one physician sees most of the patients and the nearest competitor is an hour away.

Nothing about those three businesses is alike. The buyers differ, the paperwork differs, the questions in diligence differ, and the person who knows the right questions is whoever has spent time in that kind of company. When an advisor works across the country, the first skill is not knowing every industry. The first skill is knowing how to sit with an owner for an hour and learn what makes that one company worth what it is.

Some of you reading this have done that your whole career in one market. A commercial agent who has spent twenty years around industrial buildings already knows what a manufacturer's landlord worries about. An accountant already knows which owners keep clean books and which ones keep a shoebox. An owner who sold a business knows the feeling on the other side of the table, which most advisors do not. That experience travels. What changes from state to state is the surrounding detail.

A buyer pool that does not stop at the state line

Most small and mid-sized businesses get sold to someone nearby, and some of that is simply habit. A local owner calls a local advisor, who calls the people in town. The buyer pool ends up being a few names, and the owner never learns who else might have paid more or accepted different terms.

A national buyer pool changes the conversation. A marina has a value to a person who loves boats and wants to move, to a regional operator who owns several waterfront properties, and to a group looking for a first acquisition in a place they like. A farm supply dealer might interest a larger distributor in a neighboring region that wants a footprint. A medical practice might interest a physician finishing a residency who wants to own, or a group already running offices in three states. None of those buyers needs to live within driving distance, and many of them would never have been found by a local call list.

Our approach is to keep one database of buyers and listings, so a buyer who tells us what they want in one part of the country gets matched against a business listed in another. An advisor in Georgia may hold a listing that fits a buyer first met by an advisor in Oregon. That only works if the information lives in one place and everyone can read it, which is why we built it that way. The owner gets more serious looks. The advisor gets a larger set of people to bring to the table, without having to find each one alone.

Confidentiality also gets easier, because a buyer from three states away has no reason to run into the owner's employees, customers or competitors. We cover that in how we market a business confidentially.

What it means to work under an established platform

Building a sell-side practice alone takes a long time. You need a way to find owners who are thinking about selling, a way to value their company, a place to keep the documents, a way to track buyers, a contract, a compliance process, and a firm behind you if something goes sideways. Most solo advisors spend their first years building that scaffolding and not selling businesses.

The firm is a DBA of Michael Ventures II LLC and operates under eXp Commercial of California. That gives an advisor an established structure to work inside, with a commercial real estate company already in place, instead of setting up everything from nothing. Matan Michael is a licensed advisor in California, and Yogi Shmuel is a founder as well. Both of us work on deals directly, so when you have a question about a deal you are not sending it into a department. You call a person who has probably seen something close to it.

We also generate our own owner conversations through our own outreach, which means letters, email, calls and referrals. An advisor who joins does not have to depend only on their personal network, though bringing your own relationships is welcome and often the best start. And we built the technology ourselves: one database for buyers and listings, document rooms, valuation tools and a CRM. An advisor does not have to assemble a stack of subscriptions and make them talk to each other.

Advisors are paid when a deal closes, and earnings depend on how large the deals are and how many of them reach closing. Anyone who promises income to a new advisor before a deal exists is selling something.

What stays local, whatever the platform

The platform does not replace the local parts of a deal, and no sensible person should tell you it does.

The lease is local. A landlord in a small Midwestern town behaves differently from a property company in a coastal city, and the terms that matter, such as assignment, renewal options and personal guarantees, are negotiated with that specific person in that specific building. Our post on the lease as part of the deal goes through why it often decides whether a sale closes.

Permits and licenses are local. A marina deals with harbor and water authorities. A farm supply dealer may handle regulated products that need their own registrations. A medical practice has payer contracts and professional licensing that depend on the state and sometimes on the county. Some of these transfer to a buyer and some have to be reissued, and the answer varies by state. An advisor needs to know which questions to put to the owner's attorney and the buyer's attorney early, before the deal is built on an assumption.

The state's own rules are local. Business sale mechanics, tax treatment, and how certain assets move can differ from one state to the next. We do not give legal advice and we tell every owner that their attorney and accountant confirm what applies where they are.

Your relationships are local. If you have spent years in a market, you know the lenders who answer the phone, the attorneys who close deals without making them harder, the accountants who prepare clean financials. That is worth a lot and nobody in another state can supply it. It is the part of the job the platform cannot replace, and it is probably the reason an experienced person is useful to us in the first place.

Licensing, stated carefully

This section matters, so I will say it plainly. Licensing differs by state. An advisor works within the rules of the state where the business is located. Not every advisor needs the same license everywhere, and no advisor should assume that a license held in one state covers a deal in another.

How your own license, if you have one, and the firm's structure under eXp Commercial fit together for a given state is something I walk through with each person in the first conversation. It depends on where you live, what you hold, and where your first owners are. I would rather spend a full hour on it than hand you a one-line answer that turns out to be wrong.

If you are an accountant or an M&A professional without a real estate license, the answer could look different from the answer for a commercial agent who already holds one. If you are an owner who sold a business and wants to do this for others, the same applies. Come with questions, and expect that some answers start with "it depends on the state."

Learning from advisors in other states

An advisor working alone in one state sees a limited number of deals in a limited number of industries. An advisor inside a firm that works with owners everywhere gets to hear how things went in other places.

Someone who sold a medical practice in one state can tell you how the payer contracts were handled and what the buyer asked for in diligence. Someone who closed a marina can tell you what the harbor authority wanted and how long it took. The shape of the questions transfers even when the deal does not. You walk into your first farm supply listing knowing what an experienced colleague wished they had asked sooner.

This works in the other direction as well. If you know a market well, such as a particular coastal region or a certain kind of manufacturing corridor, other advisors can bring you into their deals when a buyer or a property sits in your area. That is a better use of everyone's time than an advisor flying in to meet a landlord they have never heard of.

Remote work and in-person work

Much of the job can be done from a desk. Valuation conversations happen by video. Documents move through a shared document room. Buyer introductions are emails and calls. Financial review is a screen and a spreadsheet. An advisor in one state can run a good deal for an owner in another without leaving home for most of it.

Some things need a person in the room. An owner who is nervous about letting a stranger walk the shop floor wants to meet you first. A buyer who is about to spend a large sum wants to see the building, the equipment and the staff. A landlord negotiation goes better across a table. When a deal requires travel, you plan for it, and when a deal sits in your home market, you handle those meetings yourself with the advantage of knowing the area.

Some advisors enjoy the travel and the variety. Others stay in the market they know and use the national buyer pool to bring people to them. Both work.

What to ask in the first conversation

Bring a list. Ask how your own license and the firm's structure fit together in the states where you expect to work. Ask which kinds of businesses the firm sees most, and which ones it turns away. Ask how owner conversations get to an advisor, and how much of your pipeline you are expected to bring yourself. Ask who is on the phone when a deal gets stuck. Ask how a deal is handled when two advisors in different states are both involved. Ask how and when an advisor is paid, and what happens to a deal if you leave. Ask to see the technology rather than hear it described.

We would rather answer hard questions at the start than have you discover the answers later. If you want to see how joining works, start there, and then call us. Tell us where you live, what you have done, and which kinds of businesses you already understand. We will tell you honestly whether it fits.

This article shares our opinion and general information. It is not legal or tax advice. Always speak with a licensed attorney for legal advice, and a qualified tax professional for tax questions, before you act.